The following information is provided to assist the reader in understanding technologies disclosed below and the environment in which such technologies may typically be used. The terms used herein are not intended to be limited to any particular narrow interpretation unless clearly stated otherwise in this document. References set forth herein may facilitate understanding of the technologies or the background thereof. The disclosure of all references cited herein are incorporated by reference.
Graphitic carbon materials (indicating sp2 hybridized carbon materials) and other forms and/or allotropes of carbon have found a wide range of applications, such as low-density structures, energy storage structures, and thermal management structures as a result of material properties including, for example, strength-to-density ratio, porosity, surface area, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, or a combination thereof. The internal structure of a carbon material largely defines its properties. Therefore, it is desirable to design and synthesize graphitic/carbon materials with a predetermined structure which may be optimized for a particular use.
DNA can be readily fabricated into a predetermined, arbitrary-shaped one-dimensional (1D), two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) structures in nanoscale using currently available DNA nanotechnology. As a template, however, a major limitation of pure DNA nanostructure lies in its limited chemical stability. Hence, almost all reported DNA-based nanofabrications were either based on solution chemistry or conducted at close to room temperature For example, solution phase metallization on DNA has been demonstrated using various metals (e.g., Ag, Cu, Ni and Au) and can be made site-specific through modification of DNA nanostructure with binding sites that accept DNA-modified Au or Ag nanoparticles. Vapor phase deposition of metals onto DNA has been used to pattern vapor-phase deposited metal. DNA nanostructures may also be used direct the etching and deposition of SiO2 at room temperature. Although, relatively high quality pattern transfer may be achieved in such low-reaction processes, the resultant inorganic nanostructures are often of low crystallinity.
High temperature (>500° C.) is often needed for the synthesis and crystallization of most inorganic materials, such as porous carbon. The possibility of using DNA nanostructure to direct chemical synthesis at this extreme temperature range could create new opportunities in materials design and fabrication. However, studies have shown that DNA begins to degrade at temperatures as low as 130° C. and may completely degrade at temperatures around 190. It is thus seemingly not possible to achieve pattern transfer from DNA nanostructures under these conditions.